> Fire and knives are for food, if there’s food.
>
> - Sjocelym saying.
----------------------------------------
The elevator slid to a halt at the bottom of its shaft, and the doors hissed open to reveal the inky blackness of the tunnel beyond. Jackie stalked out with the conjured mote of light trailing a few paces behind her in midair to limn the walls with a white glow. The antechamber to the tunnel itself had been dusted with a fresh coat of debris from the walls and ceiling, and as she walked close enough for the mote’s light to illuminate the arched peak of the passageway she could see a few worrying cracks in the stone.
“From the lens?” she wondered aloud, letting her fingers trail over the stone - then pulling them back as a whisper of power rippled out from where she had touched. The stone overhead flowed into liquid smoothness, a vaulted pond that stilled into a smooth, unmarred curve overhead.
She glared at her hand. “We have got to set some boundaries,” she hissed. A sense of profound absurdity washed over her as she thought of what she must look like - face burnt, hair crisped and wild, standing in the dark scolding her own upraised hand. She let it drop to her side and stalked forward, and even the silent companionship of the light felt like smug silence.
A waver crept into her step, and she stumbled on a chunk of rock that had fallen to the floor. The darkness beyond the light’s reach was total, but in its featureless black her eyes kept finding the worn edges of Arjun’s face, smiling gleefully at some minor detail they had learned or with his brow furrowed in quiet contemplation. It felt like a hole punched through her, and she was going to bathe in Vumo’s blood-
She tripped again, grasping dizzily for the rock wall of the tunnel to steady herself. The burst of sudden rage had sent her reeling, crisp-clear edges of the world snapping into focus around her with a burning, straight line leading straight to Vumo - and his inevitable death. The simplicity was appealing, seductive. She sagged to the ground, feeling the cold stone of the wall against her back - then with her left hand reached to her belt.
Vumo’s gifts had been nothing if not complete, and the light armor she had been given held a small, sturdy knife clipped at her hip. She drew it and held it against her right wrist, breathing hard - and, abruptly, felt her head clear. The world faded back into its usual blend of color and form, her thoughts stilling into something approaching normalcy.
“Listen,” she said, tightening her grip on the knife. “The only way this is going to work is if you keep yourself under control. You’re angry, I’m angry, we’re all angry, but I have to walk in a straight fucking line for a while before we can do anything about it - so pipe down, or they’ll all be telling stories about the lady who beat Vumo to death with her stump.”
She listened to her heart pound for a few beats, then felt a sullen acknowledgement. Her mind sharpened further, a slight fog lifting that she had barely noticed. She shivered. Could she tell, if it decided not to hold to its word?
Jackie pushed to her feet and shook her head sharply, resuming her trek down the passage. She could worry about that later. Dealing with Tija’s remnant had to come after dealing with Vumo if she wanted any chance at stopping the deranged scriptsmith. Her mind was less inclined to wander now, at least, and she made good time down the corridor - only to stop short as she saw a looming wall of rough stone blocking the passage.
The ceiling had caved in, and though her light only reached a short way into the tangle of debris it looked as though the blockage stretched quite far. She cursed and put her hand on the nearest chunk of stone.
Nothing happened.
She pulled her hand back, scowling. “So you’re what, sulking now?” she muttered. She felt a complex series of impressions that she couldn’t interpret. Sighing, Jackie pulled off her pack and took out her notebook and pen. She gripped her pen in her right hand, which still felt awkward - but then it began to scrawl roughly on the page.
too much
“You don’t have to make it pretty,” Jackie retorted.
more crystals
She shook her head, sticking her free hand in her now-empty crystal pouch. “Sorry, all out,” she said, turning the pouch out to demonstrate. “Unless you want to use the one in the tablet.”
save for vumo and sister
“Yeah,” she said, puffing out her cheeks and looking around. “Probably smart. I don’t suppose you have any other bright ideas? Not much we can do while we’re stuck-”
“-here,” she finished, her eyes widening. “Christ, warn me before you do that.” She was standing on one of Ce Raedhil’s broad streets, though it was currently choked with carts and milling crowds. Screams and anguished cries filtered through the noise of the crowd, and there was a pervasive feel of dread hanging in the air. The building closest to her was being methodically boarded up while a pair of unfriendly looking men stood nearby with their hands on their blades, glowering at anyone who strayed too close.
She smelled a fire - several, actually, judging from the general amount of smoke over the normally smoke-free inner city. Now it hung in thick clouds against the purpling sky, rising from at least four locations she could see. At the street corner the crowd charged a cart laden with supplies, sending it skittering sideways before it eventually tipped over. Grain spilled onto the cobbles in heaps while its owner stared, too terrified to speak. Jackie looked away from the mob as they swarmed the food, her eyes falling instead on the towering spire in front of her - the Archives.
“This should be fun,” Jackie grumbled. She pushed forward, doing her best to steer clear of the carts and wagons rumbling their way through the crowd - although she found herself relatively isolated as people shied away from the tall, armored foreigner in their midst.
A shout drew her eye to the side, the owner of the overturned cart had been cornered by the mob. They pressed in around him, forcing him back up against a stone facade until he could retreat no further. One man stepped forward to swing at him with a heavy length of wood, catching him across the jaw. The man staggered to the side with blood dripping from his lips.
Jackie tensed. Her eyes darted from the injured man to the mob around him, taking in the chaos in the streets - and then she turned and walked on towards the Archives, leaving the mob behind her. Before she had made it ten paces the shouts and muffled screams intensified, but she resisted the urge to pause and look back. “Not my problem,” she muttered, only halfway speaking to her taciturn companion.
“Zhaqi Ra!”, a man’s voice shouted, ringing with unnatural volume through the square. Jackie froze and looked behind her. The mob had dispersed, replaced by a tight semicircle of blue-on-silver Raedhilym guards with the weeping, bloodied merchant at the center. Standing in front of them with his finger pointing directly at her was Sigu, the guard captain.
“...shit, guess it is,” Jackie muttered, turning to face him completely. Even at this distance she could see the strain in his face, the dirt and sweat showing beneath his armor. He beckoned a handful of his men forward, and they stood to either side of him in a cautious pose.
“Kinda busy!” she yelled back. “Can we talk later?”
Sigu glowered at her by way of an answer, reaching down to tap the side of his armor - and suddenly blurring towards her with startling speed, crossing the distance between them in less than a second. Jackie yelped despite herself, her right hand coming up instinctively. She felt the malevolent intent build and hurriedly quashed it, forcing her hand back to her side as Sigu stutter-stepped to a halt a short distance in front of her.
“We talk now,” he said gruffly. “You’re in the city without my knowledge, at the same time this chaos strikes. You’re involved somehow.” He clenched his teeth, jaw grinding as he glared up at her, taking in her blistered features. “You will explain the Lighthouse, the Sanctum, the-” He broke off, his words failing him, and past the clenched teeth and furrowed brow Jackie saw the terror in his eyes.
“Explain!” he demanded, hammering the butt of his pike on the ground.
She held up a hand - her left hand - placatingly as she tried to find the right words to respond. “Vumo did this,” she said. “He fired the device on top of the Lighthouse, it was his plan to kill Maja. I’m trying to go after him now, but I have to move fast or he’ll escape.”
“Kill…” Sigu croaked. “No. Vumo Ra would not.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re still lying to me.”
Jackie looked at him, exasperated, waving her charred sleeve in his face. “I didn’t get like this from standing too close to the fireplace, you idiot. If I was going to lie, why would I choose that story?” Sigu’s gauntlet tightened on his pike, and Jackie felt her right hand tense. She forced it to relax with an effort, racking her brain for a way out that didn’t involve painting the square with the man across from her. A memory of Ce Raedhil in the morning fog surfaced, of an incredulous Sigu stopping them at the gate-
“Ask your brother,” she said abruptly, startling the captain from his intent focus. “Sjogydhu was there, on top of the Lighthouse. He saw the whole thing. He’s probably somewhere between here and there right now.”
Sigu barked a short, unamused laugh. “You expect me to believe that Sjogydhu Qa would tell me Vumo Ra did this thing? That the sun does not shine from Vumo Ra’s glorious footsteps, and the stars twinkle out of his ass?” He shook his head. “You’re still lying to me.”
Jackie took a step closer, straining to keep her fist at her side. “When we parted, your brother told me where to look for Vumo Vae,” she said, stressing the title. Sigu’s eyes widened, and his face went slack. Jackie took another step forward. “He told me so that I could kill him.”
“He would - would not,” Sigu said, looking profoundly ill-at-ease. “He would… Vae.”
“I know,” Jackie said gently. “A name for traitors. Blasphemers.” She gestured towards the horizon , the dim glow still visible where fires danced on Maja’s mountain. “What else do you call the man who killed God?”
Sigu opened his mouth to object, but Jackie spoke first. “Find your brother,” she advised him. “Ask him what happened, hear it from him. He can help you try and prepare the city.”
“Prepare?” Sigu asked, more desolate than angry now.
“For the attack. I don’t have time to explain everything to you,” she said, skipping back a few steps over his shouted objection. “Find Sjogydhu, ask him! Tell him it’s his penance.” She lifted her hand, palm towards the Archive, hoping desperately that the remnant would read her intent-
-and stumbled as she found herself standing on the uneven stones of an alleyway, far removed from the quiet of the street she had left. After a moment wrestling with the contents of her stomach, she poked her head around the nearest corner to peer down a nearly-deserted side street. Clear of the wall she could see the Archives, closer than they had been but still far distant.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a few more of those tucked away?” she muttered, wiping groggily at her mouth.
no
She spat on the pavement, then broke into a jog down the street. “You weren’t worth it,” she muttered.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
same
She laughed, despite herself, then winced as the motion pulled at the raw, burnt skin on her face. “Little shit,” she coughed. “As soon as this is over I’m going to replace you with a hook.”
----------------------------------------
Tasja slumped against the nearest flat piece of fallen debris, his arms numb and nearly immobile from fatigue. He had come a long way from the spindly scribe that had left Sjan Saal, but he had a long way to go before he could match the endurance of Jyte’s trained soldiers - or the few Cereinem women that had been caught out of the valley. They worked tirelessly, faces grim and soot-stained as they methodically cleared rubble to reach supply caches, passageways and the bodies of the fallen.
There had not been many people in the Sanctum when the attack came, and those who had been in the control room had been immolated completely - but they had not restricted movement throughout the adjacent corridors. Finding refugees crushed by rubble or suffocated in airless pockets became part of their routine as they worked towards their ultimate goal of clearing the way towards the lower stair, and from there to the valley beyond.
Dimly, he remembered Mark chiding him for lying still after too much exertion and hauled himself to his feet, stumbling forward in an attempt to keep his muscles from locking up. He wandered aimlessly for a minute before deciding to seek out one of Jyte’s surviving quartermasters. In the growing darkness, if he could not lift he could at least bear a strand of qim to help the others work.
Try as he might, however, he could not locate the man who had been assigned to his area. Tasja frowned. The quartermaster should be easy to locate, with the qim among his supplies. He worked his way outward bit by bit, eventually finding himself poking his head down long, black corridors in the hopes of finding the telltale glow.
Finally, he peered around a debris-obstructed corner and spotted the ember-glow of coinlight. He grinned triumphantly, only to pause as he drew closer and saw the qim lying haphazardly across the floor, half-buried in a pile of fine ash. He approached cautiously, peering into the darkness beyond the puddle of light.
“Hello?” he asked. The dust-covered walls stifled the echo, and he heard no response. His fingers brushed the ash away, and he frowned to see that the qim weren’t tied into strings - they were simply scattered among the ash. He bent down to collect them, piling them in his robes. As he sifted through the fine ash he found other things as well - buckles and rivets, fasteners.
“A bag of coins, burned by the blast?” he wondered aloud. “They’re charged, though…”
The darkness had nothing to say in response to his musings. He trailed his fingers through the ash, looking for more coins, but the cool metal that he pulled out next did not glow. He frowned and looked at it - and froze. It was the rough iron badge of a quartermaster. Tasja was suddenly, painfully aware of how loud his breathing was, how holding the glowing coins made him stand out like a beacon in the dark passage.
He straightened up slowly, carefully, making no sudden movements - and then bolted, running as fast as he could back towards the others without spilling the coins wrapped in his shirt.
The slap of his sandals against the stone seemed horribly loud against the silence that had held the corridor just seconds ago, and in his mind Tasja envisioned some raw, skeletal thing slithering forward from the darkness, mere steps behind him-
He emerged from the corridor into the arched vault that the attack had cored out of the mountainside, filled with the dim shapes of Aesvain hunched under burdens or straining at ropes. Tasja kept running until he felt securely among them, then spun to see - nothing. He stood there, transfixed, chest heaving with exertion. The corridor yawned wide and dark, but no more so than any other.
“Here, now,” a voice said from behind him, sending Tasja’s heart thudding against his ribs as he stumbled away. When he turned to look at the speaker he saw Jyte frowning at him, bemusement plain on his face. “What’ve you got, are those qim? Been looking for more.”
“Quartermaster,” Tasja gasped, trying to control his breathing. “Dead, in the corridor. Burnt to ash.”
Jyte’s face went grim. “Another,” he grumbled. “He must have been-”
“No,” Tasja said, stumbling forward to grab at Jyte’s armor. “Not dead in the attack. Some sort of scriptwork, but nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Show me,” Jyte rumbled, waving his hand. Men appeared around him as if he had bellowed the command, alert and wary. Tasja began to lead them towards the corridor, trying to walk as if the unlit abyss of the passage did not scare him nearly to the point of catatonia.
His facade shattered when a growling rumble shuddered through the stone, causing dust to spring up from the walls and sending the more precarious remnants of the Sanctum crashing down. Men yelled and scrambled to get away from the tumbling chunks of rock as a ledge shattered loose and slammed through two floors below it.
Tasja recovered himself enough to keep his head up, alert for any debris that might bounce in their direction. The rumbling grew louder still. Jyte looked around, eyes narrowed, before he paused - and looked up. Realization dawned on his face, and he thrust his pike into the air with a shout.
“The gateway!” he cried, whipping the halberd in a tight circle and leveling it at the half-exposed transit hall partway up the slope. “The Sjocelym attack! Defend the gateway!”
Tasja’s group, already armed, charged up the loose ramp that had been left mercifully intact by the gate’s disturbances just as the shaking reached its peak. The gateway let out a blinding flash, then shuddered still. It was dark at the end of the hallway, but within its arch the blackness shimmered faintly.
“Ready!” a Sjocelym-accented voice called out from the portal - a scriptsmith, since Tasja could make out the faint outline of robes. Behind the arch faint silhouettes were swarming towards the opening.
Jyte charged forward, halberd raised to attack, only to pull up short as a towering figure strode through the portal and looked around.
“Good job, you get to live,” Mark said, clapping the scriptsmith on the shoulder and stepping through the portal with his other hand bound in a crude sling. He straightened up, then looked over at the dumbstruck gold-cloaks. “Jyte, that you?”
The Aesvain captain flung his pike to the ground and hugged Mark around the middle with such force that Tasja could see his face pale even in the dim light.
“Injured!” Mark gasped, tapping Jyte frantically on the shoulder. “Ribs! Fuck, ow.” He sucked in a breath as Jyte loosened his grip, then blinked as he noticed the room’s missing wall.
“So, uh,” he said, staring into the missing heart of the Sanctum. The stars had come out beyond the gaping void, and in the distance the flicker of lightning was visible - the stormfront, pressing towards Ce Raedhil from the north.
Mark sucked in a breath. “Yeah. That explains a lot.” Behind him a few stragglers were limping forward - two Cereinem, leaning on each other, the scriptsmith who had opened the door and a lone Sjocelym pikeman. After the last walked through, the scriptsmith toggled the gateway closed and half-collapsed against the arch, looking dazed.
“Cajet,” Jyte said, pulling back with a broad smile. “We did not expect to see you back here so soon. Where are the others?”
“Dead,” Mark said, grim-faced. “When Maja died we were overrun. They cornered us, whittled us down. There was an - explosion-”
A flicker of pain crossed his face, and his stance wavered. Jyte guided him to a nearby chunk of rock so he could sit, which he did with shaky gratitude. “When I woke up they had gone,” Mark continued. He nodded his head towards the Cereinem. “Went searching, found those two still breathing. Never bet against an asolan.” He held up his wrist to show a braided cord holding a coin tight against his skin.
“It’s Tesvaji’s,” he said hoarsely. “He was beside me when I woke up, dead, and this was on my wrist. There was blood where he had dragged himself over-” He stopped, then shook his head. “I think he knew he was too far gone for it to help.”
Tasja’s smile had long ago faded. “And Jesse?” he asked, his voice barely audible. “Jackie? Arjun?” He took a step forward. “Gusje?”
Mark shook his head. “Jackie and Arjun should be fine,” he said. “They went to Ce Raedhil ahead of the attack. Jesse and Gusje…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t find their bodies. I want to go back and look when it’s light, if we can reactivate the gateway...”
“We may not have time,” Jyte said, slipping back into the grim face he had worn all day. He walked over and pulled the keystone from beneath the gateway, laying it carefully on its side. “It was the Sjocelym that attacked us. They could come to finish the job at any moment. We’ve been working to clear the stair so that we can make our stand in the valley, if it comes to that.”
His words jolted Tasja back to the present, and he rushed forward to catch the captain’s attention. “The quartermaster,” he said urgently. “We still need-”
“Yes,” Jyte said, motioning to his men. “Now that we all have our arms, we may as well use them.” He gave Mark a rough pat on the shoulder, then grabbed his own halberd. “I’ll have water and food sent up. Recover your strength. My men and I have a few things yet to do before we take our rest.”
----------------------------------------
It was clear that Cosvamo would have preferred to continue grilling Jesse and Gusje for information right up until they arrived, but at the sight of the city he had relented and let them watch through the windows as they drew near.
It was not a promising sight. The city was ablaze in several quarters, with the wooden-framed outer districts smoldering in a broad ring while the inner walls were dotted with fewer yet more intense blazes. The mane of waving cloth that gave Stonesails its name was alight, and the pillar was wreathed in dancing flame on two sides. The Lighthouse, normally an ever-present glow in the Raedhilym nightscape, had fallen dark.
“Typical,” Cosvamo muttered, although his face was pale. “We’ll make for the scriptsmiths’ tower, that’s likely where we’ll find our target.” He barked out some terse commands to the pilot and the airship began to veer towards the darkened plaza surrounding the Archives, which seemed mostly untouched.
Jesse looked down and saw Gusje staring wide-eyed at the mayhem below. Even from this height they could see the tiny dots of people as they swarmed in insectile fury up and down the streets, mobbing carts and storefronts or surging against barricades that walled off access to the more affluent neighborhoods. At least one of the gates to the inner city had been breached, and that was a surging river of people pouring inward, spreading among the slender towers and spreading chaos as they went.
“What are they doing?” Gusje breathed. “They’re burning everything, fighting - killing each other.” She blinked rapidly, horrified but unwilling to pull away from the window. “There were so many people there, and now...”
“They’re panicking,” Jesse said. “They must have felt Maja’s death just as we did, so now they’re afraid. Afraid that they won’t be able to eat, that they won’t be safe in their homes.”
“How does this help?” she asked. “What safety do they get by burning the town? They’re all part of the same village, big as it is. They could be working together, counting food, weighing seed grain-”
Jesse shook his head, lowering himself down beside her. “You can’t judge people by your village,” he said. “When order breaks down, the people fill in what they know from daily life. These people took from each other, feared each other even before today. You saw how it was, coming in. That wall was never there to keep anyone out but other Sjocelym.”
“It’s not right,” Gusje said, staring down at the conflagration below.
“It’s not our concern,” Cosvamo said breezily, striding past them to grab a vest from a nearby rack on the wall. He and a few others were suiting up, strapping on belts and vests - Jesse felt more than a slight familiarity, watching the Setelym soldiers don their full battle kit.
“You two stay here,” Cosvamo said, grabbing what was unmistakably a rifle from a locker. “We’ll be in and out, and back in the air before you know it.”
“Arjun and Jackie-” Jesse began.
Cosvamo cut him off with a dismissive wave. “Yes, yes, we’ll find them - odds are they’re in the same place we’ve got to go anyway. We’re well equipped for this, just sit back and let us work - please?” He quirked an eyebrow at them, then slid a translucent visor over his eyes. His men did the same, and seconds after they felt the soft vibration of the airship’s landing a hatch hissed open in the side of the main compartment, dropping a ramp to the grassy plaza below.
Jesse immediately smelled smoke, heard the distant screams and yells of the riot as it raged in streets still far away from their location. Cosvamo and his men walked carefully down the ramp - then, seeing nobody, began to move across the field. They had not made it even a quarter of the way to the entrance before one of Sjogydhu’s armored guards went running up the stairs in the distance, shouting something loud and indistinct.
“They’ve been spotted,” Jesse said, feeling the strange urge to whisper. He pointed to the team as they veered towards cover, a small stone fountain near the midway point of their route. “Be interesting to see how they approach the entrance now.” He could make out more of the armored guards near the entrance now, and one was readying a long, thin device of some sort. He raised it to his shoulder, and a fireball shot out - but it struck nowhere near Cosvamo’s team.
Jesse frowned and leaned forward, and Cosvamo’s men peered around the fountain in bemusement as the guards shot another burst of flame towards a wide avenue on the edge of the plaza, then another. Both blasts dissipated as they hit to set the grass afire while an armored figure stalked through the flames. The flickering light glinted off the scales of a metal chestpiece, unmoved by the assault and slowly advancing.
Cosvamo’s men began to creep forward once again as the guards intensified their assault, taking advantage of their distraction. The figure was beginning to slow, the blasts of fire dissipating later and later until one left guttering flames on the intruder’s cloak. With quick motions that radiated fury even at Jesse’s distant vantage, they reached up with one arm and grabbed a small, square object from a backpack.
A screen on the device lit up. “Holy shit,” Jesse muttered, springing to his feet and grabbing his sword. The remaining Setelym on the ship stared, but before they could do more than gape he was halfway out the hatch. Gusje followed on his heels, staring fixedly at the bright, cold light that shone out from Jackie’s tablet.
The next fireball never came. The man holding the weapon was yanked forward so fast that Jesse heard bones snap, flying over Jackie’s head to bounce and slide along the turf. She raised her arm towards the entryway and crooked her fingers - two more guards flew off the staircase as if fired from a cannon to crunch wetly against the side of the building.
A final guard clutched a smoking, red-hot medallion protectively in one gauntlet, breathing heavily as he raised another inscribed rod to point at Jackie. She dropped her hand to the tablet, then flicked a bright star of light that left a dripping, white-hot hole in the man’s armor. He dropped to the ground, the rod rolling from nerveless fingers.
Jesse slowed to a dazed walk, wide-eyed, as Jackie tucked the tablet against her side and began to climb the stairs.
“That’s new,” Cosvamo said, sauntering up beside Jesse with his eyes fixed on the staircase. The tension in his jaw belied his casual tone. “Isn’t that one of the two we’re supposed to be picking up?”
Jesse nodded, his hand curling around the grip of his sword. “Yeah,” he said. “I really hope so.”